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I posted this essay a year-and-a-half ago, well before filming of TF5 or even ITS TITLE OR PLOT had been announced:

So I'm a member of the biggest Transformers forum online and I recently posted the first of MANY threads I've had in mind for the past year since Transformers: Age of Extinction was released. I hadn't really written anything down until a couple days before the anniversary on June 27th, though...which meant I had to kinda wing it, but I think it's turned out pretty well and worth sharing, so w/e, here you go!

Oh, and the site I submitted it to has all these retarded rules about sex, politics, and abortion, so that's what I'm talking about and dancing around in a couple places. Just the other day I actually got my signature image removed and earned an infraction for it because someone there finally figured out it was Manson and had obviously been breaking those rules since forever, lol.

Anyway, here it is.

EXPOSING
THE KNIGHTHOOD THEME
IN TRANSFORMERS:
AGE OF EXTINCTION

It's been almost AN ENTIRE YEAR since Transformers: Age of Extinction hit theaters and I have yet to see a FULL exploration of this movie's KNIGHTHOOD THEME and how thoroughly and ingeniously it's embedded within the film.

In honor of tomorrow's anniversary of the movie's release, I've begun ramping up my efforts to finally get started with the MANY detailed threads I've been planning to share this past year. I've had to rush to get this out on time so it's still going to be an ever-expanding work-in-progress for awhile, but HEY it's off to a good start, at least. So bear with me, plz!

Literally every single time I watch this film I can't help but catch SO many subtly interwoven thematic elements the whole way through and think to myself, "WTF IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE???"

WHY ARE WE NOT
TALKING ABOUT THIS?!?
o_O

And now here's a thread SPECIFICALLY for that!

HUZZAH!!!

\o/

So here we go, HAIL TO THE KING and all that.

First and foremost, obviously, is Optimus Prime's upgrade...

OPTIMUS KNIGHT

Of course, his newly-revealed status as a Knight would have been even more clear if the filmmakers had followed through more fully with the "Silver Knight" concept art for Optimus Prime's "Knight Upgrade," but almost ALL of the same knight's armor design elements are still quite apparent in the film. After all, he has his sword, his neck-guards, his skirting, etc. He even gets gauntlets and a shield, eventually!

Which raises the question of HOW exactly he got that sword, the gauntlets, and the shield...?

HE PULLED A
SWORD FROM A STONE

That's right, Optimus Prime basically reenacted the Arthurian myth of the Sword in the Stone!

And what did he do next?

Oh, yeah...

HE FOUGHT A
FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON

But, naturally, any self-respecting knight needs his stallion and the glory of combat.

So what was Prime's NEXT order of business after taming the dragon?

CHARGING INTO BATTLE
ON HIS VALIANT STEED

And that same "dragon/steed" is, obviously, based on the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Latin for "Rex," of course, LITERALLY translating into "KING."

I mean...just sayin'!

But I digress.

Speaking of the Dinobots, the film sees them reconceptualized instead as "legendary warriors" and, presumably, Optimus Prime's fellow Knights, a notion reflected in their character designs and weaponry. We see them with helmets, faceplates, spiked boots, maces, flails, etc., all of distinctly medieval, "knightly" origin.

For instance...

A DINOBOT
IN KNIGHT'S ARMOR

Speaking of which...

THE KNIGHTSHIP

IS A CROWN

Also, as Lockdown told Optimus, The Knightship was "built for all you knights, you great crusaders," alluding to not only the fact that Lockdown's ship (traditionally his own "Nightship") was instead built for the Knights before being commandeered by him, but also establishing that it was built for their "crusades," a reference to the medieval expeditions and campaigns waged by Knights.

For instance...

CRUSADING KNIGHTS
IN THEIR SHIPS

And, perhaps MOST interestingly, Lockdown mockingly welcomes a captive Optimus back to a VERY SPECIAL part of the Knightship...

Easily the most obscure reference the film makes to the age of chivalry is its use of the word "TEMENOS," which, as mentioned in another thread, is an ancient term for what's essentially a temple or sanctuary, often meant for communing with divinity.

In fact, the temenos of the Knightship seems to be where Optimus pulls the sword from the "stone" and beseeches an unseen force to "Recognize one of your knights," before being awarded his further Knight-upgrades and weaponry in response.

Interestingly, a similar dynamic is afoot with regards to Cade's own adventures. He uses a VERY SUSPICIOUS choice of words to describe his rural Texan research lab/barn...

In other words, it's a TEMENOS!

XD

Furthermore, it's ALSO the first of TWO temenos sites to which Optimus is dragged against his will (not to mention repaired and/or upgraded), which serves as a "prime example," if you will, of the MANY recurring motifs echoing throughout the film.

Reiterating and cleverly solidifying the motif of the temenos, Cade even says a kind of prayer while he's in his makeshift lab/barn/temenos, much like Optimus himself does in his own Knightship's temenos later. After Cade extinguishes a fire in his lab, he rather poignantly exclaims as he approaches Optimus, "God! Something in here has to make this family some money. Come on, you old wreck. Judgment day."

And, as if that prayer were answered, Cade soon discovers that the truck is in fact a Transformer, from which, one way or another, he intends to reap financial gains. Then, in the process, he revives Optimus and repairs his "spark," which Cade explains humans call a "soul."

Keeping in mind that the fire within the barn/lab/temenos was sparked immediately following Cade's little moment to himself where he sees a shooting star and communes with his dearly departed one true love, and that the film ends with Optimus telling Cade to look to the stars and think of one of them as his "soul" while he's away, it's clearly not only another tidy little motif at work here but also yet another example of the Knighthood theme at work in the film.

Now, I don't want to get into the religious connotations here too much in deference to the forum's rules about such things (goofy though they may be when the movie itself raises the issue), so I'll just leave it at that and point out that I'm simply carefully explaining the film's symbolism in its own language here, with as much neutrality as possible, and that the symbolism in question does indeed connect DIRECTLY to the theme of KNIGHTS and their general worldview.

After all, medieval knights were VERY MUCH concerned with such matters. Souls, honor, love and all that. I'm sure you get the point.

But back to the Knightship for a moment, when Cade almost literally stumbles into its armory, what does he find there?

OH, HEY, IT'S A
ROUNDTABLE!!!

ANOTHER REFERENCE
TO ARTHURIAN LEGEND

And, speaking of Arthurian legend, when we're introduced to K.S.I.'s own robot lab and "temple of technology," where Joshua Joyce is cracked the code of the Transformium genome, they use a VERY intriguing term to refer to it...

TWICE

Yes, the Holy Grail, the prize of Arthurian legend!

Additionally, he later refers to that "Holy Grail" as his company's "Salvation," not to mention calling Darcy "Princess"...albeit sarcastically, lol.

And then there's the matter of the movie's OTHER "princess"...Cade's daughter, Tessa.

SPECIFICALLY,
HER CHASTITY

I've got a whole separate thread planned around that and, again, the board's rules make it a little tricky to discuss...but I'd say it's already MORE THAN CLEAR that a good bit of this movie dwells upon Cade's overbearing protectiveness of his daughter's chastity, which was similarly of great concern to knights in medieval times and, ultimately, plays directly into the theme of knighthood which everyone is hopefully beginning to see is TRULY pervasive throughout this film.

But MORE on that LATER!

;)

In the meantime, I think I've pretty much made my point here, lol.

Just to be thorough, however...

Right off the bat, there's a particularly sly, subtle little allusion the the medieval theme which cleverly foreshadows the later revelation of Optimus Prime's Knighthood.

And let's not forget the deck of "kill cards" Attinger uses to keep track of the Transformers he's hunting! Yep, it features an assortment of medieval symbolism itself...

JACKS, QUEENS,
KINGS, AND JOKERS

On a similar note, there's the curious phrase Lockdown uses shortly after referencing Prime's knighthood...

This AGAIN refers to a game positively STEEPED in medieval symbolism; kings, queens, bishops, pawns, rooks, castles.

OH, AND YEAH...
KNIGHTS

One tiny bit that was REALLY difficult to finally catch however was THIS little detail. The ring that Savoy wears on his finger for his Cemetary Wind black ops missions (and likely in honor of his sister as well) is a skull inscribed with the words "Memento Mori," meaning roughly, "Remember Death," or "Remember that you have to die," an ancient Latin phrase greatly in vogue during medieval times and a concept adopted by numerous orders of knights verbatim.

And, perhaps the masterstroke here, we also have the movie's soundtrack, by a band which is actually called Imagine DRAGONS.

But, furthermore, the song they contributed to the movie which is MOST FREQUENTLY interwoven throughout the score is THIS track...

THE KING IS CROWNED
IT'S DO OR DIE

I absolutely LOVE how all these thematic elements relevant to knighthood are SO exceedingly entwined within every bit of the film, perhaps all the more because of how completely so much of it seems to have gone RIGHT over everyone's heads! A lot of it really IS pretty clever, interesting, and incredibly subtle...particularly considering how BLATANTLY the theme is presented elsewhere.

Man, I love it and it really IS quite a feat!

Personally, I think it's pretty cool stuff, too...most of which I've never seen mentioned anywhere.

Especially keeping in mind what short shrift this movie often gets from critics, it seems increasingly important to help bring these elements to light and to help raise the general audience's awareness that, indeed, there certainly IS a great deal more going on with this movie and its symbolism than is generally acknowledged.

And what a shame that is!

I honestly find the multifaceted applications of the motifs to be utterly fascinating filmmaking.

I hope that YOU had some fun and found all this to be informative and interesting, too!

:)

Oh, and one last AWESOME reference to Knighthood!

Sooooo, YEAH.

I ALREADY SAW THIS MOVIE WAAAAAAAAAY BEFORE
ANYONE WHO DIDN'TFUCKING MAKE IT.

The tickets should just appear via some sort of creative telepathic-thingy. Tick-o-pathy.

Nice work at being the predictive fandom oracle.

On the other hand, I didn't realise that Transformers had been using chivalric tropes (Knights Templar/Crusading/Arthurian) as its narrative base. How fascinating. The mixture between machine and chivalry, in particular that particular type of Templar-Hospitaller style of semi monastic knighthood. Next time I teach Crusading history I will have to make sure to mention Transformers as an example of representation of modern concepts of medieval knighthood. Will go well against bits of Battle of the Ice by Nevsky.

I posted THIS on April 15th, the day it was announced that England's Stonehenge had been scouted as a filming location:

There's been a pretty cool development today regarding the knighthood theme found within the Transformers films. And I do mean that in the PLURAL sense, since the whole motif of knight-based design elements for the Transformers themselves began with Sentinel Prime, as revealed within the bonus features for TF:DotM, which is particularly of interest since he himself may have been a Cybertronian knight like his successor was revealed to have been in the following film.

But I digress.

As many of you may have noticed, the news broke today that TF5 has not only been scouting for filming locations in England, but specifically at STONEHENGE.

And so the plot thickens!

Intriguingly, one early, fictional accounting of the building of Stonehenge, by Geoffrey of Monmouth from his 14th century book Historia Regum Brittaniae, was that it was built by none other than Merlin himself and that King Arthur's father was buried inside its ring.

Of course there's no real way of knowing for sure exactly what their plans are for Stonehenge, but the very fact that they plan to film there at all would seem to suggest that the exploration of the knighthood theme from the previous two films is set to continue apace with the fifth!

OMFG I CANNOT WAIT.

Also of interest, and potential relevance to this discussion, is the lingering mystery of how exactly the massive blocks of Stonehenge were moved there and erected by ancient man. In fact, Merlin himself was said to have enlisted the help of "giants" in the task, an illustration of which from the same book by Geoffrey of Monmouth happens to be the earliest known depiction of Stonehenge, as seen below.

So.

Anyone wanna bet those giants who built Stonehenge will soon turn out to have been from Cybertron???

XD

Then a month-and-a-half later they made an announcement and I had to post THIS:

On the other hand, I didn't realise that Transformers had been using chivalric tropes (Knights Templar/Crusading/Arthurian) as its narrative base. How fascinating. The mixture between machine and chivalry, in particular that particular type of Templar-Hospitaller style of semi monastic knighthood. Next time I teach Crusading history I will have to make sure to mention Transformers as an example of representation of modern concepts of medieval knighthood. Will go well against bits of Battle of the Ice by Nevsky.

As I'm sure many of you have already seen, recent snapchat promotions for Transformers: The Last Knight have included images of a new Autobot alt. mode, presumably Hound's, which features the symbol for the Red Cross.

Intriguingly, and most relevant to the subject of this thread as well as QUITE possibly to the movie itself, the symbolism of the Red Cross actually stems from the Middle Ages, specifically THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS known as the Rosicrucians.

In deference to the rules of these boards, I can't really say much about them...but it's likewise relevant and worth noting that the Rosicrucians were intimately tied to and involved with the pursuit of alchemy, one of the principle pursuits of which just so happens to have been the transmutation of lead into gold.

This of course had deeper, spiritual underpinnings perhaps best understood on a metaphorical level, but regardless the core concept itself was one of...do I even NEED to say it?!? Yeah. You guessed it.

TRANSFORMATION!!!​

How FASCINATING it is then in light of that revelation that the filmmakers have QUITE HEAVYHANDEDLY hinted at the fact of THE LAST KNIGHT'S golden hue, eh?

Maaaan, these movies have ALWAYS been positively LADEN with symbolism and subtext, but I can't HELP but feel like these new writers have REALLY outdone themselves and gone the extra mile THIS time around!!! It truly seems like THIS one in particular is REALLY gonna be something SPECIAL.

I mean...DAMN.

o_O

It wouldn't sting so much that the PRIMARY Transformers message board recently banned me if I hadn't been almost literally feeding them fucking GOLD the whole goddamned time.

Perhaps this is a good opportunity to address the users and staff at echoingthesound.org since this thread has been so handily linked-to from the Transformers thread I'm locked out of of that forum at present.

Firstly, it's been an excessively rough year for me. Apologies for any undue surliness. It is what it is and I acknowledge that.

That said, WOW, the staff and admins were misguided AS ALL HELL in banishing me, a registered member since 2005.

Been a fan of NIN since I saw "Head Like a Hole" on MTV the summer it debuted. Wrote it down on my sketchpad at 1 am and bought the album the very next day. NIN drew me to Manson, in fact. The first show I attended by EITHER featured BOTH (9/11/94 -- St. Louis, MO) and I was already a Manson fan even before that by virtue of a radio promo single I'd chanced upon beforehand leading up to my live introduction. OMG, SeemsLikeSalvation and all that.

Bootlegged a million NIN shows since then, shared them all gratis, completed the 2006 summer tour chapter of the NINDRIVE with my bootlegs (Columbus '06, I think it was?), bought an ets t-shirt, wore it proudly, fucking filmed the center/top angle of the Chicago How to Destroy Angels show, etc.

I could go on but those are definite highlights.

And ALL THE WHILE I was 100% TROLLED ALMOST NONSTOP by certain members of the ets clique. As silly as it sounds, that's exactly what it felt like, a clique. I'd catch shit and they'd walk away smugly in their impunity. Hell, the Transformers and Manson threads ALONE speak VOLUMES towards that point. And let's not forget the deleted posts, either. Context is everything.

And it was just SO OFTEN overlooked. As other ets members have noted, I was practically the WHIPPING BOY of ets simply by virtue of having been an adamant fan of Marilyn Manson and Transformers. I literally spoke ill of NIN like ONE TIME. That's it! Yet, as SOON as I would retaliate in kind against my tormentors suddenly I was the one who was out of line and an asshole? The Transformers thread ESPECIALLY shows how game I was to field NEAR-CONSTANT personal attacks -- so often unnoticed or ignored by the staff -- yet I'd be HAMMERED UPON for not reporting them and trying to deal with it myself. I guess I can't fault the staff TOO much when the whiny-ass aggressors and their hangers-on were constantly reporting MY minor infractions yet I almost NEVER reported their ceaseless bullshit. Would've been nice to have seen a bit more research put into it, though.

And, sure, I was probably a little out of line FINALLY SNAPPING LIKE I DID at allllll the assholish bullshit levied at me towards the end of the most recent Manson thread which was closed there. Hell, I'd even hasten to remind everyone that the thread BEFORE that was largely closed because it was basically a pile-on against me because OMFG I was a fan with an opinion and a spine.

It sucks that everyone misunderstood that I was knowingly calling a british asshole a cunt and thought I was insulting a female moderator, even though that was IMMEDIATELY and incontrovertibly clarified.

It sucks that Kris (and others) specifically mentioned to me in private messages that they'd reported insults towards me that I wouldn't have and then left me hanging out to dry when I brought it up in the mod. thread.

It sucks that I called out a mod for presumably knowing about those insults and NOT acting on them based on those messages and then I got banned for "disrespecting a mod" by an admin who was seemingly as contextually clueless as the mods.

Most of all, it REALLY sucks to see cyberbully assholes like bobbie solo and october_midnight still posting there with impunity when the post that FINALLY set everything off was merely my response to their CONSTANT FUCKING PERSONAL ATTACKS AGAINST ME. Several of which still stand in countless threads to this day.

Really, it just sucks to be cast out like a leper when I was contributing TONS of valid discussion and worthwhile material to the message board, but just happened to hold unpopular opinions, back them up, and stand up for myself when the staff was unaware or maybe even unwilling to intervene on my behalf despite their duty.

Like I said before, it was shameful. If it was undertaken knowingly, of course.

If any shared members here would care to cut and paste this over there for perusal in the mod. thread it would be MUCH appreciated.

Unfortunately, my voice was stifled before I was ever really able to effectively raise these points.

Having my account there restored, even on a limited, provisional basis, would be a fantastic gesture and a grand step in the right direction.

There's no legitimate reason for such unbridled animosity between fandoms and forums.

The NIN forum here isn't a constant source of strife anymore than NIN fans get shut down for hating Manson here, after all.

I was a good member of ets who was just CONSTANTLY shit upon for being a fan of locally-unpopular media and it would be nice to see some logic prevail at last.

Muh grrl Isabella was there and even gave a special "character featurette" presentation for Transformers: The Last Knight during the proceedings, so OF COURSE it was awesome af. So much cool shit to see!